Mr Miyagi and Daniel go to Japan to learn about love, life, and loss during the Festival of the Dead.

Intention:

1986's 'The Karate Kid: Part II' has many strengths and a few weaknesses. The main Karate plot is a bit formulaic and cliched but the subplots about love, loss and Japanese culture are stunningly good. It seems to me that these were the elements that the filmmakers were really focused on and the Karate stuff was just to satisfy the title and the audience. Bill Conti's score is also gorgeously romantic and mysterious (Probably one of my all-time favourites). So this short focuses only on those strengths and removes all the Karate and the villains.

I've rendered it in grainy, high-contrast Black&White to give it more of the feel of a 1950s Japanese movie (As Japanese cultural is a focus and the score is very Japanese). To further this idea, I've included a vintage 1962 'Shochiku' Studios title-card at the beginning and removed overtly modern (1980s) elements to make it more timeless (The 1950s influence on clothes from the 1980s helped with this a lot). Finally, the short is presented in a more intimate 3:2 aspect-ratio, instead of the original wide 1.85:1. This entailed re-framing and Pan-and-Scanning every shot individually.

- Reframed every shot to 3:2
- Regraded to grainy high-contrast B&W
- Removed first American set act of the movie. We now start as the plane is landing in Japan, with Mr Miyagi's words about the trip playing in Daniel's mind
- Removed all plot elements involving Karate, the threat to the village and Mr Miyagi's rival from the past
- Reworked in more, or different tracks from KK2's score. The more the music could tell the emotional story and less dialogue I could use the better
- I employed quite a few slow crossfades to give things a dreamlike quality, when we move through time
- The timeline of the original film is condensed and rearranged. So several nights and days are brought together as one.

Cuts and Additions:

I won't list all the cuts as I used footage from all over the movie and it would just be too confusing to list but here are things I did beyond just visual/audio trims and rescoring...

00.00 - Added vintage 1962 'Shochiku' Studios logo. I liked that it has clouds, which thematically link to the first scene
00.12 - Slow fade up from black on Daniel's face. Out of context, hopefully it just comes across as Daniel feeling restless
00.14 - Added very cut-up and rearranged pieces of dialogue over the new credits to explain the reasons for being in Japan. Added plenty of ghostly echo to the vocals. Hopefully it's clear that these are conversations that Daniel is remembering
00.27 - Added new titlecard over cloud footage, as if this is what Daniel is seeing out of the window. As far as I know, the Kanji are correct (Fingers crossed)
00.49 - Almost totally remade soundscape of new title sequence. New music, cars, planes, wind, chatter etc
00.55 - Added new onscreen credits to the major players in the short. Bill Conti gets the final credit, as his music is so important to the short
00.04.20 - Added slow crossfade as Miyagi is singing to Yukie
07.20 - Added slow crossfade from Obon dance to Tea Ceremony
07.37 - Added slow crossfade into Bon Festival (This originally took place at the very end of the movie)
09.16 - Added slow crossfade from Daniel smiling at Kumiko, to Daniel getting ready for bed. Hopefully it conveys that he thinking about her
09.39 - Added slow crossfade and new framing so Daniel sleeping appears to echo Miyagi's father dying
09.53 - Added slow crossfade from Daniel contemplating to Miyagi's fathers death, to Miyagi honoring his father during Bon
10.00 - Added slow crossfade from Miyagi's lantern, to a long shot of everybody's lanterns
10.17 - Added slow crossfade from lanterns, to Miyagi contemplating his father
10.22 - Brought in the sound of the ocean from the next scene early
10.30 - Added slow crossfade and new framing so the head of Miyagi as a child, appears to fade into head of Miyagi as an old man
10.49 - Inserted shot of Miyagi's symbolic tree, as if he is contemplating it. This also allowed for the removal of a chunk of the original scene
12.06 - Added slow crossfade from Daniel and Miyagi, to Daniel walking on the harbour
12.56 - As I've heavily recut the tea cermony, it is partly rescored and the soundFX are recreated
14.43 - Added sounds of a building storm and the candle being extinguised slowly into the soundmix
14.50 - Added end titlecard
14.54 - Added rumble of thunder to the end

What an unexpected surprise!
Call me a Philistine, but I always thought "Karate Kid" was fluff, and "Karate Kid II," more of the same.
TM2YC has worked wonders, crafting a marvelous short of intersecting love stories.
Romance between Daniel and Kumiko, Miyagi and Yukie, and both males love for dead or dying fathers.
The black n white lends a timeless feel and disguises the 80s setting.
There is no martial conflict in this, and this really fits into the Love Consecution theme.
With TM2YC involved, all editing is first rate.

TM2YC really kicked ass with this Consecution. I totally forgot how fricking great "Karate Kid Part II" was. And instead of just condensing the story down, the editor made it a unique experience with the black & white and reframing and making it feel like Japanese cinema. Bravo!

I've always loved The Karate Kid Parts I and II, especially how the second film is so different from the first. While the first is an 80s 'you can do it!' rah rah kid against the bullies romp the second was more of a master and apprentice adventure to another culture, and exploring Mr. Miyagi's past was always the best part of the movie.

So to see this unexpected experimental short come together of editing together of just 15 minutes of spread out parts was really a wonderful surprise. It's not just about taking great parts of The Karate Kid Part II and making a short film, but rather something truly reflective on love and loss in the Japanese culture. I was moved and intrigued the whole way through, and I give MAJOR props to TM2YC for the effort made here-- and turning out something awesome in the process.

If I had anything I'd gripe about it would be that I wished somehow the ice breaking scene (or some parts of it) made it into the short. Sure, it has basically nothing to do with the overall theme of the short but that scene was BY FAR my favorite in the original movie, about believing in yourself and finding the focus to accomplish the impossible. No big deal though :)

Life, death, age, youth, and more are juxtaposed in this fantastic short - and love ties it all together. Aesthetically beautiful - nails that 50's Japanese look. Reframing seems perfectly natural. Excising the Karate from Karate Kid works better than it has any right to. I have a soft spot for the concept of TM2YC's other contribution, Birthday Presents - but the exceptional execution of this short wins me over to declare it my personal favorite short of this Consecution.

What a lovely short edit! The conversion to B&W along with the reframing really compliment the beautiful short film focusing on love (romantic, and family). TM2YC has a done a great job here, and it was nice to see something a little different done with the material instead of just truncating the source to ~15 minutes.

I watched streaming in HD on Vimeo, and there was some macroblocking to the picture. Whether that is a result of the editor or Vimeo's re-encoding I can't say, but I docked a couple points Also, the B&W was a bit too dark in some scenes, but overall convincing. The technical editing for both audio and video was top notch. Like that-one-guy noted in his review, the end edit felt abrupt, but I agree it was a stylistic choice.